


no one else is you

by magisterequitum



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie laughs and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, his laptop digging into her stomach. "No really, what is it to?" </p><p>He cuts his eyes at her again, lifting his chin, all tempered by his smile. He brings the stock card back down so they both can read it. "An invitation to a launch party. For Pemberley Digital's latest project."</p>
            </blockquote>





	no one else is you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tosca1390](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! :)
> 
> I tried to give you formal wear and a bit of slice of them in their lives and how they work together and such for this Treat. Also a special appearance from a sister diary format, and a smattering of people we all know from the series. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!

The invitation comes in the mail five weeks after she's officially moved in together with Darcy. 

Ensconced in a nice sized apartment that now blends her shabby bookshelves with his surprising numerous coffee table art books, her life is cozy. Graduation had been a blur; full of getting her paperwork filed right, and dissertation paper and project completed, and a bizarre argument between Lydia and her mother on just why she should wear a white dress for the ceremony. She'd had a new starter company then and an even tinier apartment than this, and it had been hers and she'd done her own thing. 

Now, there are still unpacked boxes in the closet from her move to his place. The videos and web-diaries seem both so long ago and not at all, as if she cannot believe that seven months ago she was a different person. Things she'll get around to eventually, a statement that always gets a bemused eyebrow raise from Darcy. 

It's nice. 

Truly it is. 

She's working and doing good things. She has a boyfriend. Her family hasn't imploded in the past month. Lydia smiles and Jane sends her goofy texts about Bing and Charlotte comes to see her every few weeks. And she's here. 

Lizzie slips her nail under the envelope's catch and slots it open. Fine card stock with blue calligraphy swirls drops out with a shake. It's addressed to both of them. There's something that makes her stomach flip at her name next to his, together. Butterflies that hollow her out.

"What's that?" 

"I don't know," she says and gives her wrist a little flick to where Darcy sits across from her in the living room. Her aim is true. _Bingo_ and she grins at the frown he gives her when it lands on his keyboard. She rises from the armchair to slide beside him on the couch. "Read it." 

Darcy switches it to the hand away from her, using his long arms to his advantage. "I don't think I will." He cuts his eyes sideways from behind those too-big glasses, a tiny smile beginning at the corner of his mouth. 

She adopts a pout that would make Lydia proud of her and presses against his side. Her nose she nuzzles right at the place where his ear gives way to his jawline. "No fair." 

The sharp inhale she draws from him delights her. Just like learning the places on his body she could draw reactions from had delighted her weeks ago, and still did now. 

"Now who's not playing fair," he murmurs, voice considerably lower from his mock indignation a moment earlier.

Lizzie laughs and kisses him on the corner of his mouth, his laptop digging into her stomach. "No really, what is it to?" 

He cuts his eyes at her again, lifting his chin, all tempered by his smile. He brings the stock card back down so they both can read it. "An invitation to a launch party. For Pemberley Digital's latest project." 

She makes a throaty noise of interest. "Oh that matchmaking partnership?" 

"Indeed."

"Well," she smiles against his cheek. "That'll be fun." 

He grabs at her hand, catching his fingers with hers. "It will." 

 

 

 

Charlotte comes to visit for the weekend, and Lizzie entreats her into finding a dress for the party. 

"Something that dips low!" Lydia had ordered on the phone this morning. 

Lizzie's mouth had pulled down into a frown, picking at her breakfast orange's skin. "Lydia, there will be investors at this event." 

"I hardly think a flash of your tits will scare them off that much!"

Now, Charlotte sifts through a rack of marked-down sale dresses in a Chestnut Street store. She pulls a face at a garish orange shade and looks over at her. "Why not just have Jane send you something?" 

Lizzie eyes the horrible orange dress, a vision filling her head of it on her and her red hair and a room full of people laughing at her for not being able to dress. "She offered. I said she was too busy with her new line to worry about that. She's got the designs to pitch soon." Fitting a sample size to her would have been too much for Jane's already busy schedule; not that her older sister hadn't insisted that she could indeed do it, and really it would be no bother. 

Her friend makes a noise, eyebrows pitching towards her hairline, and plucks a dress from the rack. She holds it up to her body, wiggling her hips to exaggerate. "Now, I know we said no boob showing, but," a flip of her wrist, showing off the back. "What about low back?" 

The green is truly lovely and will look nice with her hair, and the back isn't so low. A soft drape that will show the patch of freckles that Darcy liked to kiss too often. 

"Charlotte," Lizzie breathes, reaching to touch the jersey material, "You're a genius." 

"I know. Does this mean we can get lunch?" 

"Anything you want."

 

 

 

He does touch the cluster of freckles when he sees her dress. 

He's asking here where his cufflinks are, and she still teases him about them, earning her a mock indignant look down his nose, and then he sees the back of her dress in the light of the bathroom. She's turned to grab a bracelet. Warm fingers accompany the intake of breath. 

"Elizabeth," his voice low enough to make her skin prickle. 

"We'll be late," she answers and fixes his cufflinks and shirt. 

 

 

 

The girl's name is Emma and somehow Lizzie has been left alone with her and her companion. The other girl is energetic and excited, lipstick smeared from the glass of champagne in her hand. She's eagerly telling Lizzie all about her matchmaking company, and she finds herself listening in genuine interest. She thinks that Lydia would be interested in this idea also. 

Eyeing the way the man next to Emma touches her wrist, Lizzie makes a mental note to text Lydia later. "And you're certain that people can be well matched this way? That you know enough about them?" 

Lizzie's question is met with abrupt silence, and it's only when Emma draws back, lips still parted and eyebrows pinched, that she realizes the blunder she's just made. A flush creeps over her cheeks as her blunt words play back in her head. She wishes Gigi hadn't been out of town. She would have known the right thing to say. "I-" 

"Well," Emma says, "It's no different from online companies already. And so much can be learned through social media now." A pointed barb that's offered with a hesitant smile. 

"Right," Alex jumps in, and Lizzie wishes she had a drink. She'd put hers down somewhere and forgot about it after the dinner. "It's all very processed." He gives her a sympathetic smile, as if he realizes her insult was an accident. 

"Alex," comes a voice over her shoulder and a palm briefly rests on her hip, a welcome relief. "How are you?" 

She lets Darcy take over the conversation from there, watches him as she leans against his forearm. Sometimes, times like this when she watches him talk to people in a crowded room, or when she remembers how he'd been in Pemberley's board meetings, she cannot believe she ever thought him repressed. How silly when it was her more often than not that still did not know how to talk to people. Who still sometimes put her foot in her mouth as Charlotte would say. 

Lizzie says as much to Darcy when they're alone and Emma and Alex have drifted off elsewhere. Probably to find people that didn't insult their new venture. "That was terrible. I'm so sorry."

His thumb sweeps across her wrist, right where her pulse is still beating so hard, embarrassment still heating her face. "What are you talking about?" 

"I completely bombed that. Just like the last event." Her eyebrow twitches and she knows her face is currently contorting into something that's not flattering in the least; she's watched her videos okay. 

Darcy's mouth moves in such a way she knows he's swallowing a laugh. "This time you didn't tell Mister Beemon that he was out of touch from the current century and was lucky he was already married." 

Frowning, she pushes her hand against his chest. "He deserved that." 

"Indeed he did." He leans down and kisses her, a quick brush of dry lips before she can respond. An open affectionate display but no one can really see them. "You're lovely. Don't worry. Alex can handle Emma in any situation." 

She kisses him back, another quick peck, because he is too kind to her. 

 

 

 

"You're lovely," Darcy tells her again when they've gone home and he's unzipped her dress, sliding one warm hand between the now split fabric to flatten his palm against her back. 

Lizzie smiles against his lips, her chin bumping his as she rolls her shoulders and helps him see the dress to the floor. "Will, you're just saying that. You're too nice." 

"Lizzie Bennett," he says, pushing her back towards their bed, finger trailing along the lace edge of her bra. "Are you accusing me of lying?" 

"You might be a bit biased." She helps him discard their clothes, knowing he'll frown in the morning over their sloppiness in leaving it all on the floor. 

He presses her down onto the comforter and then slows. One hand rests on her thigh, the other touching the side of her breast with the back of his knuckles. "I know you."

She shifts her hips against the bed, restless against his hyper-attentive gaze in the darkness of the room. There's little light except from the outside. Still she can see the long sweep of his eyelashes, and sometimes it's too much that he looks at her this way. 

"You are loud." He sweeps his knuckles across the soft cool skin of her bare breast. 

"You can be inconsiderate." His palm spreads out, sliding to the left. 

"But you have a large heart." Here he finally stops, his hand resting awkwardly across her breast and the dip between, pressing against her ribcage's meeting and where the organ in question beats. "The largest heart I know. And you mean well." 

Lizzie's throat tightens and she reaches for him with both hands, to bring him even closer till they're full body touching, curling her fingers behind his neck and bringing a leg around his hip. 

"And I love you, even if you insult my clients and leave your clothes everywhere." 

She scoffs against his mouth. Suddenly she can breathe again, her chest loosening and air returning to her lungs. "Like you don't leave your art books everywhere." 

"We cannot all be perfect." He says the lie and then covers her mouth with his. 

 

 

 

In the morning, Lizzie wakes to lips against her lower back, that spot he'd forgotten about when they'd been naked last night. 

She rolls over and dislodges him from the freckles, shifting so they're more even and she can tangle her legs with his, warmth still in the covers. Blinking gritty eyes, she sees he's picked up their clothes from the floor. 

"I love you," and it's a laugh right below his collarbone.


End file.
